


I Never Stood A Chance

by Book_Lover2001



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: AU, Eliott has been holding back his feelings until now, Lucas doesn't want to want Eliott, M/M, Parallel Universe, angsty, but not modern, cmbyn inspired, unspecified time period, you don't need to know CMBYN to read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Book_Lover2001/pseuds/Book_Lover2001
Summary: Every summer the Lallemant's host an artist who travels to Paris to intern at the Louvre. Every summer, the guest comes and goes without having made so much as an impression in Lucas' memory-- or vice versa.That is, until one year when Lucas finds himself enamoured with a visiting painter whose every sentence is like a poem, and whose intoxicating presence has become suffocating.
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 11
Kudos: 80





	I Never Stood A Chance

On the other side of the thick plastered wall, behind the chipping, faded blue paint; separated by the history that was seeped in the bones of the structure, was a boy that had filled Lucas’ every waking minute. Their division was at the hand of a mere matter of metres, a distance that seemed as close as an arm’s reach away, and as far as an ocean. The opaque divide gave way for his imagination; leaving it up to his creativity to fill in the blanks where his sight was unable to. Perhaps the boy was pacing in his room as he let his thoughts wash over him like a wave crashing onto a shore. Maybe he was staring longingly out the window, the view of the city settling an easy smile on his features. He could be laying across his bed, the mattress slumping under his weight as his body shaped an imprint into it. One probability sat less likely, but more desired; perhaps the boy was staring at the wall as well, thinking about him.

Lucas couldn’t peel his attention away, his heart beating in his ears. The neighbouring boy was just within his reach, all he needed was the courage to hold out a hand and touch. Laying his palm flat against the worn out wall, he let his fingers wander as much as his mind. He shouldn't be this enamoured with him and he knew that he shouldn't allow the guest to have this intoxicating effect on him. He shouldn't feel like this for a boy, let alone someone he barely knew. 

The young man had arrived two weeks ago, having stolen Lucas’ breath with a single step onto the property line. It may have not been cinematic like in a perfectly shot movie. There may have not been a perfectly angled view of him, and there may not have been a ray of sunlight that illuminated him with a heavenly glow, but there didn’t have to be. Lucas saw him in just as much glory without all of that. 

_ I’m Eliott. _ The boy may not have been lit like a masterpiece, but his voice was as melodic as a song. The way his lips pursed, and how his tongue curled around all the syllables as if tasting them. Each word sounded as important as the last, with a careful deliberation behind each of them. Well spoken, so sure of himself, shrouded in the language that he masked his thoughts behind. He was hiding-- hiding away from all those who saw him, from the safety of his words; the same words that he chose with consideration which made his thoughts seem like a meticulously crafted quilt. And how Lucas wanted so much to unstitch him, to dissect his beautiful phrases and peel away at the layers that he cloaked himself in. How Lucas wanted so much to watch him fall apart in his hands until he was just the soul of the very being that mesmerized him like a hypnotic lullaby. 

He would be leaving soon, his visitation only consisting of another few weeks. Lucas wished that his weeks could transform into months, into years, into a lifetime. Yet, even a lifetime would be too short for him to know Eliott enough that he could replicate every atom of his being behind his eyelids. The fear of never knowing him was the catalyst which propelled him forward. 

Finding himself on their shared balcony, Lucas began to wonder if the intensity of which he was feeling every emotion should be alarming. Everything he felt had become harsh, overpowering, nauseating, and unrelenting. 

The glass under his knuckle was cold and delicate, causing the pressure of his knock to rattle the pane. There was a shuffle, the quiet rustle of what sounded like bedsheets, then the echo of nearing steps. 

Lucas blinked up at him, his eyes falling on the beauty that was a statue of Adonis that had wandered far from the Louvre. Eliott’s features softened as they found Lucas awaiting him. 

“You’re shaking,” his voice came out like warm honey, even with the evident notes of sleep. Lucas had not realized he was shivering, nor had he noticed the drops of rain falling down on him. They soaked into his cotton shirt, sticking it to his body with the claustrophobia of an enclosed space. Eliott stepped aside, the sheer curtain sweeping around him with the wind. Lucas entered, letting the sudden warmth flood over him. 

They looked at each other under a heavy silence which enveloped them both, resting in the air like a thick fog. Then with a gentle touch, Eliott moved forth and gripped his fingers into the damp fabric. Lucas became unable to function as the older boy removed the shirt with the ease of stripping the jacket off a book. It now laid discarded on the floor by their feet in a heap that landed with a thud on the ground. In a swift move, Eliott had reached for a towel that had been left to dry on the back of a nearby chair. He wrapped it around Lucas, draping it over his shoulders. Lucas’ hands curled into the soft material, pulling it tighter around his naked torso. The room may have been hot with the summer's heat but he clung to the towel none the less, certain that it was the only thing grounding him. 

“It’s late,” Eliott spoke after a moment. Nothing he said was ever less or more than what he meant. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Lucas told him, honestly. Truthfully he had not attempted to sleep because he knew it would be fruitless. “Did I wake you?” 

“No.” 

“But you were in bed?” 

“Yes, but I too, couldn’t sleep.” Lucas’ gaze dropped down to the wet shirt, which was now puddling water. Eliott’s eyes peered at him carefully, as if trying to see into his thoughts. “You think loudly.” 

“Is that a bad thing?” Lucas raised his head to meet his eye. 

“No,” he said with a small shrug. “But it must drive you wild. If I can hear it out here, how loud must it be between your ears?”

“Deafening,” he told the taller boy with a quiet voice. 

“Can you not sleep because of your thoughts?” The question had an obvious answer, and yet it made Lucas think before responding.

“Yes, but they are not all bad thoughts.”

“I never said they were,” Eliott countered, without harshness. His tone was calm, even soothing. 

“Why can  _ you _ not sleep?” 

“Because of you,” the young man replied as casually as one might describe the weather. Lucas blinked at his honesty, a blush spreading high on his cheeks.

“Me?” 

“Yes, you,” Eliott repeated as if it were a known fact. “About what you said today-- it has kept me awake.” 

“What I said today?” 

“When you were sitting at the piano and I was laying on the carpet with my sketchbook. You asked me to pick a song for you to play and I said I couldn’t possibly choose because I wanted to hear them all. Do you recall what you told me?” 

“I told you that it didn’t matter which song you picked because, between all the different universes, you got to hear every single one.”

“Between all the different universes…” Eliott spoke his words back at him, letting them rest in his mouth in contemplation. They were toe to toe with an invisible force between them like opposing magnets, making them unable to touch. “In this theory of yours,” he continued. “What do you think the other Lucases and Eliotts are doing?” 

“What are we doing?” Lucas bit his lip in thought. “Sleeping.” 

“Sleeping,” Eliott chuckled, a sound low and quiet that made Lucas’ heart skip. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Have you been thinking much about this?” Eliott’s response came in the form of a small nod; a single down-up motion that could have easily been missed if he hadn't had Lucas’ unwavering attention. 

“It has taken up my every second.” 

“I’m sorry,” Lucas apologized. Eliott tilted his head curiously at him, his brows furrowing. 

“I’m not.” There was another bout of silence, but this time, it was a moment of hesitation. Eliott seemed to be debating whether to speak or not, before settling on the first. “Do you believe that there is a universe where we are asleep… together?” The question sent a trill down Lucas’ spine more than the cold rain ever did. 

“Yes,” he breathed out, fighting back the urge to shrink away from the tension developing in the space between them. Eliott looked down at him, their bodies having gravitated closer to one another during their quiet whispers in the dark. The moon was the only source of light, the night sky pouring into the room through the french doors. The curtains remained pulled back, and as they stood in the shadow of the doorway, the light coming through illuminated Eliott. Perhaps he was seeing things from a new angle, having never been this close to the boy, but Lucas thought he was breathtaking at this distance.

“Is that such an unattainable universe? Can we not possibly be that universe?” Eliott’s eyes bore into him, the anticipation of an answer glossing over his irises making the blue-green hue glassy. Lucas’ voice caught in his throat, feeling his legs threatening to crumple under his weight. Never had Eliott been this forthright with him. Never had Eliott shown Lucas anything but the distant kindness that each summer guest did. Lucas had come here in need of Eliott’s honesty and precise words.  _ Tell me that I am only dreaming. Tell me that you do not like me, so that I can move on. Tell me with cold calculation, that you, Eliott Demaury, find me childish and that it is all in my head.  _ He had not come here expecting vulnerability, a courage that was based solely on a want. 

“Tell me you don’t want me,” Lucas pleaded, unable to breathe any longer, the air too thick to swallow. Eliott placed a delicate hand on Lucas’ cheek, the smaller boy fought the urge to lean into the touch. “Please, tell me.” 

“Is it so hard to believe that I might?” Eliott’s words carved into him like a knife in a tree. 

“You can’t.” With the strength of a thousand men, Lucas stepped back, feeling like he was being ripped away from his lifeline. It was a gutting feeling to lose the warmth of his skin, but he needed to be told not to want this-- that he couldn’t want this. “Please, hate me. Tell me that you couldn’t possibly like me.”

“I won’t.” His stern eyes told Lucas the truth. He wouldn’t. 

“Please,” his voice broke, as his grip on the towel became painfully tight. “This can’t happen. Please, don’t make it harder then it has to be. You will leave me soon enough, and it will crush me and I will be left with regretful memories.” 

“Am I a regret?” Eliott asked, watching him intently. Any harshness he expected those words to come with, any offense, was not there. 

“Not yet,” Lucas told him. “We have done nothing to regret. Nothing that will shame us.” 

“I am not afraid of shame,” Eliott defended, his arms coming up to wrap around himself. 

“Every year my father fosters an artist for the summer and all have come and gone without a look in my general direction. Like a choreographed routine, they appear and leave without a mark on my memory. Why must you be different? Why do you  _ insist _ on being different?” 

“Why do you insist on not letting me be?” The question was thrown back at him with a frustration that Eliott had never shown him before. His facade was starting to falter; his words betraying him. 

“You can come and leave, but I cannot. I am here, at least for two more years. My father is not the gracious man all you artists believe.” A shadow passed over Eliott’s features, one that was perhaps realization. 

“He seems…” 

“Everyone is different behind closed doors. I am.”

“You are not with me.” Lucas pressed his lips together, casting a glance that spoke more than he ever could. He, unlike Eliott, didn't show himself in words or art. He showed himself in looks, in the keys of a piano, in small actions.

“You are my closed door.” He was given a pitiful look that sat uncomfortably in Lucas’ stomach. “I am not a princess in a tower, Demaury. I do not need rescuing. You barely know me. We are nothing more than strangers.” Eliott stepped forward bringing them back to the distance they were at before. He brought his hand back to Lucas’ face and it sent an electrical shock to his heart. 

“Do you not feel that?” Eliott asked, with a pleading curiosity. 

“Feel what?” Lucas choked out, trying not to crumble under Eliott's hand, or his eyes, or his words. Eliott brought their foreheads together, and Lucas could feel his breath warm on his skin.

“Like you would die if I pulled away. We may be strangers, but you can’t deny that for some reason it is painful to even be a room away.”

“Please, don’t do this to me,” Lucas begged, closing his eyes.

“You are beautiful,” Eliott said instead. He ran his thumb across Lucas’ cheek, a faint touch that was like the brush of wind. 

“You are insufferable.” 

“Your words are empty,” Eliott argued. “You don’t mean them.” 

“You are pretentious.” 

“I may be all of the above, but you don’t truly believe so. You are only trying to convince yourself that you do not want to be with me as much as I want to be with you. You want an excuse to leave, to put distance between us.”

“You are poisonous,” Lucas whispered. “You are going to kill me.” 

An involuntary small sigh left Lucas as Eliott pressed their lips together, and suddenly it felt like the room was spinning around them. Eliott tasted like mint and sugar, a sweetness he couldn’t quite place. His arm anchored around Lucas’ waist, drawing him closer, pushing their bodies together. Lucas opened his mouth at the action, and Eliott wasted no time in deepening the kiss. The shorter boy pushed up on his toes, unfurling his hands from the towel to hold Eliott’s face. In doing so, the cloth fell to the ground and immediately, Lucas shivered. Eliott’s hand moved up his bare back, warmth emanating from his touch. 

“Eliott,” Lucas spoke breathlessly, pulling away. The older boy attempted to hide the disappointment filling his eyes. 

“We can stop.” 

“No,” Lucas gasped with desperation. “You’ll kill me if you stop.” A shadow passed over Eliott’s eyes that sent a another trill down the younger boy’s spine, and before he could blink, Eliott was crashing his mouth back onto Lucas’ with a want that made his mind go numb. It was like novocaine. The warnings and pleads had been replaced with the burning intensity that he had forced deep within himself; repressing it with the hope that it would dissipate on its own. How foolish he was. 

Eliott picked him up as if he were nothing but a feather, Lucas’ legs hooking around his waist as he carried him across the room. They didn’t break the kiss, Lucas’ words becoming reality.  _ You’ll kill me if you stop _ . He never wanted it to stop. He couldn’t allow it to stop. He knew that if Eliott pulled back-- pushing him away-- he would be ripping out a piece of Lucas' heart with him.  _ I could never break your heart, so don’t you dare try to shatter mine.  _ But he would, if Eliott asked, let him break him. A simple request, and Lucas would give him his life. It was a realization that came quickly and left him unable to breathe. For as sudden as it settled in his mind, so did the understanding that it was far too soon. Far too soon for this all to be reality. Far too soon for him to be feeling this strongly. 

Lucas was out of his depths. He was being irrational and over emotional. He was being compulsive and dramatic. Each truer than the former and yet, he didn’t care. In this moment he forgot-- no, he ignored that Eliott would leave him. That Eliott couldn’t be with him, not because he didn’t want to be, but because he couldn’t. He ignored that right now, at this very moment, as he sunk into the mattress, feeling every spring in his back, he was only substituting for what he couldn’t have. A moment of happiness in replacement for a lifetime. It was not good enough, nor was it anywhere close to equal, but it was all he had.

_ Lucas _ . The way his name fell from the older boy’s lips made it sound as if he were worth more than he was. It was spoken as one might speak the names of the gods: with worship, with belief, with awe, with the weight of divinity and immortality.  _ Lucas--Apollo--Lucas--Apollo _ , they were pronounced with the same power, as if interchangeable; as if Lucas rose the sun and the day in a golden chariot over the world. 

“What do you want?” It was a question that could be answered with one word. The true torture was deciding which reply to give. _ Love. Forever. Everything. Time.  _

“You,” Lucas whispered in his ear. It was a moment that Lucas hoped Eliott would think back to someday in the far future. Someday, when he’s married and has children, perhaps grown up to be adults by this point. When he’s passing a Parisian bakery, his wife’s arm in his, and he hears the faint sound of a familiar concerto. Maybe it will be when a light breeze passes his ear, a whisper of the wind that reminds him of this memory; the one of them laying together, their souls as entwined as their bodies, their thoughts and words only for the other. A song, or a breeze, or someone bearing his name, or the sound of rain tapping against the glass with a gentle pressure-- it didn’t matter what would trigger it, but only that it would happen. It only mattered that Eliott should be forced to remember Lucas as Lucas will be forced to remember Eliott.

He didn’t know if this was love. Perhaps it was or maybe wasn’t love, not yet anyway. Maybe it could be if they worked at it, if they had time to work at it. But it didn't have to be for it to scar Lucas forever. 

_ You’ll kill me if you stop. _ For as true as they were, they were meaningless, empty words. It didn’t matter if he didn’t stop. It didn't matter if they did. It didn’t matter if they hadn’t started. Lucas would have been broken no matter what. 

“Eliott,” Lucas spoke into his shoulder, broken and strangled. As a tear rolled down his face, Eliott kissed it away. 

“Have I hurt you?”  _ Yes _ .  _ The minute you stepped into my life you hurt me. I never stood a chance.  _ Instead, he shook his head and caught the boy’s lips in his.  _ I never stood a chance.  _

It was only afterwards, when they were wrapped in each other’s arms, listening to the sound of steady heart beats and deep breaths, that Lucas would say anything.

“Do you feel as broken as I do?” he spoke quietly, afraid for a moment that Eliott had fallen asleep. The pause however, was not one of unconsciousness, but one of deep compilation. 

“I feel,” Eliott began and for the first time, he sounded unsure of his words. “Damaged.”

“Are they not the same thing?” 

“I don’t think they are,” he answered honestly, his hesitation still lingering. 

“I feel shattered into little pieces. All of me is still here, but I can no longer see who I was before you.” 

“I feel like you’ve cut off a part of me and taken it away.”

“Different, yet similar,” Lucas concluded, as Eliott’s fingers ran mindlessly through the younger’s hair. 

“I didn’t mean to break you.”

“And I didn’t mean to damage you.” No one spoke beyond that as sleep overcame them both sooner than they had wanted. Their time was calculated and Lucas wanted to spend every last minute they had creating the memories that would have to last him the rest of his life. But just like the universe's cruelty, sleep was unrelenting and unavoidable after too long. He let himself drift away, but only with comfort of Eliott tucked tighty at his side. This was the only time he welcomed sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> "You'll kill me if you stop" is my little nod to this piece's inspiration, "Call Me By Your Name". I've always loved how poetic the book was and I've tried to emulate a 'poetic' writing style although I don't know if I've accomplished that!
> 
> I always love to hear what you think, so let me know!


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